Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
by Librasmile
Summary: Ripping the veil off the past gives Dean a disturbing look at his and son's – potential – future. Written for HP Diversity fest. Dean/OFC. Includes past Dean/Ginny.


**Pay No Attention To ****The Man Behind The Curtain**

**By: ****Librasmile**

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><p><strong>Logline:<strong> _Ripping the veil off the past gives Dean a disturbing look at his and son's – possible – futures. ( Dean Thomas, Gen )Written for HP_Diversity fest._

**Prompt:** _The truth about Dean's father. ( Dean Thomas, Gen )_

**Rating:** _T for language._

**Disclaimer:** _All characters except for originals Felicia and Felix and the father-in-law are property of J.K. Rowling. I make no money from using them._

( 3482 words )

_Pay no attention the man behind the curtain_…

Dean Thomas' eyes widened in horror even as he successfully bit back the incongruous giggle that threatened to erupt.

He'd managed to turn a potential full-on laugh into a muffled choke, but the nearly empty room somehow seemed to echo with the sound.

Surreptitiously, he glanced over his shoulder.

The clerk behind him tossed him a sniffy glare before returning to his paperwork.

He sighed. If Seamus were here he probably would have burst out laughing, no matter how scandalous a breach of conduct, and gotten the two of them thrown out on their asses. If Seamus had been living up to his duties as best friend, he WOULD have been here. But his old Hogwarts classmate was off vacationing with the family in Ireland. Which didn't mean Dean would forgive him the cardinal sin of having a life while his was threatening to fall apart.

He sighed again, turning back to the curtain, trying to adjust his frame of mind.

He was in a room full of death certificates for Merlin's sake! Muggle movies were the _last_ thing he should be thinking about.

Then again the curtain may have had something to do with it.

More of a dusty, forlorn drape, it stood between visitors and the desk clerk in the front, presumably to provide a sort of ersatz privacy for the loved ones – no, NOT loved ones, he amended silently. You can't love someone you don't know – "next of kin," that was a better phrase.

Unconsciously squaring his shoulders, he pulled himself together, drew the heavy brocade aside, and stepped behind the curtain.

Placed before rows and rows of file cabinets that bore an unsettling resemblance to Madame Pince's card catalog was an old armchair and a wooden desk. On the desk was a parchment.

He stared for a moment, mesmerized by the rolled page, before blinking, breaking whatever internal spell had held him, and settling himself into the cracked, creaking leather.

It was surprisingly comfortable. Beside his elbow a cup of tea appeared sitting in a delicate china saucer, emitting fragrant wisps of steam. Next to the parchment, the gold chain on the little green-shaded lamp pulled down of its own accord, activating the bulb inside. Dean raised an eyebrow. It couldn't possibly be electricity. But he supposed they thought it would make the Muggleborns like him comfortable.

The Muggleborns…

His eyes returned to the parchment, now bathed in a soft pool of light. He reached for it then abruptly stopped. Without realizing it he began drumming his fingers.

_Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…_

Apropos of nothing his mind turned to the curtain behind him. Why a curtain rather than a wall or a door, he wondered, and such a tatty one at that. It had been emerald green once but time and wear had aged it to a drab, forest hue. The gold tassels along the edge were tangled or unraveling here and there, and the moth holes were just big enough to announce the ministry's lack of funds or lack of concern for the office's décor. In truth, the curtain looked like something that had seen better days, something liberated from one of the pureblood mansions looted after the war. It and its mate had probably adorned a sweeping expanse of French windows in some society matron's salon before salon, matron, and mansion had been burned to the ground.

Surprisingly, there had been a lot of looting after the war. A number of purebloods had died. Although the ministry and the Daily Prophet had spun it as if the victims had simply decided to just stop living one day, the truth was more than a few half-bloods and Muggleborns had decided to wreak a little vengeance on those seen as responsible for starting the war or supporting Voldemort. And they hadn't bothered to hide the bodies.

As number of identified bodies being found increased, the Ministry had sent out owls by the score. The owl that had reached Dean and his wife had come at the worst possible time. Just that day, his oldest, Felix, had found his wand, levitated the baby, and damn near given his mother a heart attack, not to mention his father…

The owl's message had said cause of death had been avada kedavra, although the aurors had also found evidence of blunt-force trauma on the back of the head and applied to various parts of the body. The body had been found in the wreckage of yet another looted mansion, although no one knows why he was there.

Dean didn't even know how they'd connected the body with him. Something to do with blood or genetics he guessed. He's sure Hermione Granger could have explained it.

He stared again at the illuminated parchment.

He'd sent Seamus his patronus right after the owl, after they'd settled the baby and gotten Felix parked in front of the DVD player with an old copy of the Wizard of Oz. It was the taped version. Felicia's father had given them a combo DVD-VCR unit as a wedding present and Felix never failed to be mesmerized by it. So they'd left him to it and waited for Seamus to arrive.

He'd gotten there in record time, a string of curses on his lips – with apologies for Felicia – over the sight of Dean's silvery parrot making him think You-Know-Who had arisen again.

Seamus hadn't been surprised when Dean showed him the letter. It was when Dean had shown him the accompanying wizard photo that Seamus had blanched. Felicia hadn't been able to view it at all.

Hours later after Felix had been tucked into bed, they'd finished off Felicia's shepherd pie and chased it with a dozen beers, that they'd come to the unavoidable, inevitable conclusion: Dean would have to go back.

Of course it wouldn't be for good, Dean had said. Seamus had been non-committal. Dean had refused to tell him about Felix.

Dean had promised himself he would never go back. After the war, when the survivors had been counted and the burials of the dead began, he had quietly gotten on the Hogwarts Express, met his family at Kings Cross station, gotten himself and his trunk into the car, rode away and never looked back.

It wasn't as if he'd gone far. He and Felicia had a lovely little home in flat, sunny if not exactly exciting Norfolk. Of course, that had only come into being after he had gone back to school to make something of himself in the Muggle world. Surprisingly, it had turned out to be easier than he'd imagined. Although of course the Muggles had no use for anything like charms or defense against the dark arts, he'd found that arithmancy had translated rather nicely to calculus and astronomy was a one-to-one match as long as he remembered to leave out all of the astrology.

The one time he'd slipped up and mentioned Jupiter going into the 7th house or some such nonsense was the day he'd caught Felicia's eye. She was majoring in anthropology and folklore. Astrology was her hobby. Three cups of coffee, one sleepover and 5 years later and they were married. They'd both waited to complete their graduate degrees before tying the knot. When Felicia's astronomy professor father walked her down the aisle, Dean knew it was only her incandescent joy and his master of mathematics degree – along with the respectable teaching position it had landed him – that had stood between him and her social-climbing father's wrath.

Two kids, 2 cars, and a mortgage later, it was water under the bridge.

Until Felix had decided to steal his wand and levitate the baby.

He wrapped his hand around the china cup and drained the tea in one gulp, wishing it was firewhiskey and ignoring the singing of his tongue.

_Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…_

Felicia had taken it in stride, or as much as any Muggle could. After all the baby hadn't been hurt. And from the moment he'd known their relationship was serious, Dean had told her he was a wizard. After one or two panic attacks, she'd adjusted rather well. Before the children had come along, she'd even meddled with his wand, although of course it wouldn't work for her. Still they'd never truly considered what they would do if one of the children displayed magic.

Stupid, of course.

They should have thought about it. _He_ should have thought about it, weighed the possibilities, come up with a plan.

But that was when he'd thought he'd been a Muggleborn, a one in a million fluke whose accidentally magical genes would go back into recession in the face of Muggle mixing.

Abruptly, he exhaled, a noisy, irritated gust, grabbed the parchment and unrolled it, his eyes minutely scanning the handwritten text.

When he and Ginny had been dating, he'd taken her to see _**The Wizard of Oz**_ at a Muggle movie theater. He'd loved that Muggle movie. Okay, it got all the wizard parts wrong but still you couldn't be mad at a story with so much _heart_. Okay Seamus could but that's only because he'd gotten sick of hearing Dean rhapsodize over it.

Ginny had never been to the cinema, so he'd chosen the theater carefully. It was one of those old revival buildings that he and his siblings used to spend their summer afternoons in. He and Ginny had eaten hot buttered popcorn, surrounded by chipped gilt scones and fading pastel wall paper while laughing themselves sick at the idiotic burlesque that was the Wicked Witch of The West.

They'd skipped back to the Leaky Cauldron singing "We're off to see the wizard…"

On the way back, Ginny had stopped before the display glass of one of the Muggle shops and all but drooled over a pair of red shoes. Unlike the movie ones, they were more strap than shoe and had high, spindly heels. They'd made his throat go dry just thinking of Ginny in them. And Ginny had managed to fog up the glass in her admiration.

That should have been his first warning.

But he hadn't noticed a thing. They'd trotted back to the Leaky Cauldron, floo'd to the Burrow to see Ginny safely home, and he'd floo'd back home to his family, floating on a cloud filled with images of Ginny.

On their next date, he'd taken her to a screening of _**The Red Shoes**_. He didn't know whether it was a fragment of the memory of Ginny staring at the red totters heels in the window or the joy of watching Dorothy skip down the yellow brick road in ruby slippers that had made him choose that movie. Whatever the reason, Ginny had been even more entranced. There was a gleam in her eye he'd never seen before, as her eyes followed the balletic glory of Moira Shearer dancing brilliantly across the screen to her character's death.

At the end of the film, Dean had belatedly wondered if perhaps the film he'd chosen was just a little too macabre for a date. But Ginny hadn't seemed disturbed at all. Thoughtful, yes she had definitely been thoughtful, maybe even a little withdrawn. But not disturbed. Not one whit.

By the time they'd finished up a cozy order of fish and chips at the Cauldron, she was up for another round of snogging at their favorite park bench in Mint Alley before finally heading home.

That's why he never saw it coming when he got the letter.

If you'd asked him to recall what was in it, the only thing he could swear to remembering with any certainty was _Dear Dean_. The rest comes and goes in disjointed fragments that, back then, tended to send his emotions ricocheting from rage to bereavement and back again.

_So sorry to do this to you_

**_Not as sorry as I am_!** he'd thought then.

_Never meant for this to happen_

_**Then you should have bloody well stopped hanging around Potter!**_

_You deserve someone who'll be there for you_

_**That's what I'd thought I had.**_

_Can't live a lie._

_**Really? Because you were doing a pretty damned good job so far.**_

Of course he'd never said any of this to her.

After Seamus had helped drink him through the worst of it, he'd just pulled back within himself, like pulling a invisible curtain closed, one that kept him hidden but let him see through to the other side, and watched.

He'd thought he was watching to see what it was about Harry that she'd wanted. Other than him being the boy that lived, they couldn't have been that much different could they? Dean had gotten better grades than Harry had. They were both reasonably good looking. They were both basically laid back guys who knew how to have a good time. Harry had been the better athlete. He'd heard rumors that his Muggle relatives weren't all that great, but then whose were?

Dean had watched to see what it was but that was all it was. Harry was the boy who lived.

Not that Dean had blamed Ginny. It was something he and the other Muggleborns had noticed about the wizard world once they'd become a part of it. If this had been the real world, he could have unrepentantly hated Ginny with a passion, because clearly she was choosing the star athlete – heck, the school STAR – over him. But in the magic world…

He had figured it out this way. Magic was to the wizards what…royalty was to the real world. In the real world, it doesn't matter who you're dating or what you promised. When you had a shot at the prince, you chased the prince and devil take the hindmost. And while he didn't strut around in fancy duds with his nose in the air and his own goon squad like Malfoy, Harry was the magic world's version of the prince. Even if Ginny had wanted someone else, and her letter made it clear that she hadn't, he'd bet his last pound note that Molly Weasley wouldn't have let her let the opportunity slip away.

So Dean had accepted defeat, more or less gracefully depending on the amount of beer he'd had on any given day, and thrown his energies into surviving the war.

And survive he had, and mostly intact. The only thing that hadn't was his faith in the wizarding world. He'd refused to stay in it. Oh he had wavered for a month, drawn by patriotic propaganda urging him to help rebuild. But he had a loving family in the Muggle world which was still intact. Why live like a refugee? So he took the out.

For a month after that Seamus had ranted and raved over the impending loss of his best friend. Dean had calmly ignored him until his packing was done. Then he'd pressed a paper with his family's home address in his hand and left. They met for drinks in the Leaky Cauldron a week later. And since then Seamus, bless his heart, hadn't blamed him any more than he'd judged him over Ginny.

So why hadn't he been able to tell him about Felix?

_Because this time you might run even from Seamus._

He knew what Seamus, especially now that he was an auror, would say. Felix would need training to control his magic. He would need to be taught. He would need to go to Hogwarts.

And there would Dean be, sucked right back in again.

He released the parchment, letting it roll closed again. He'd thought it'd only be the death certificate. Instead it had been an entire report: medical info, photographs, and even a meager will. There was a wand in a safe deposit box in Gringotts. It was his if he wanted it.

Without a word he raised his wand and aimed a spell at the parchment.

The night he'd gotten the owl, Felicia had let the VCR running after she'd scooped up Felix to take him to bed. The movie had apparently cycled through several times before Seamus had gone and Dean had started turning off the living room lights. As he'd approached the blue screen, the screen flickered, followed by a burst of static and then a picture winked into existence.

It was his mother, young and alive again, walking in a park with his chubby toddler hand tucked in hers. She was facing the screen laughing and talking indistinctly to someone. Then the picture lurched and a man lunged into view, right at baby Dean, scooping him up, twirling him around, then tucking him under his arm like an American football and running off screen. His mother just stood there laughing, finally beckoning them to return. The older – just barely older than Dean was now – man sauntered back onto the screen, giggling toddler still tucked under his arm. His mother held out her arms as if to say "hand him over" and instead the man grabbed her in his other arm and winked at the camera before trotting off screen with laughing woman and giggling child firmly in hand.

And then the screen had gone blank.

It had only been 30 seconds of film, 30 seconds out of his childhood, 30 seconds of revelation.

After the last image had faded, he'd lunged for the remote control and rewound the tape over and over again, fast forwarding, reversing, freeze framing and zooming. Until he knew every inch of the man's face, every second, every pixel.

It was HIS face, Dean's own, as well as his hands, his height, his body, walking and talking and carrying his baby self from decades in the past.

It was Dean, or at least his genetic doppelganger.

He thought back to the message the owl had delivered to his house and the bloody pictures within. His fingers tightened on his wand. But before the _incendio_ could leave his lips, he had another thought. He muttered a different incantation. The rolled parchment unfurled, seemed to shiver, then gracefully furled up again.

Dean tucked his wand away. With a wave of his hand the lamp went out. He drew aside the curtain and nodded to the oblivious clerk as he left.

Back home, he came through the foyer to find Felicia and the kids in the living room. Felicia was dozing in the armchair with the sleeping baby in her lap. Felix was mesmerized in front of the TV again, watching the Wizard of Oz _again_. He frowned slightly, feeling the weight of his wand from where it sat tucked in his sleeve.

Felicia stirred and he bent down to softly kiss her the rest of the way awake. They smiled at each other and then as one their eyes turned to Felix. They turned back to each other, their eyes speaking silently.

That's what he loved about Felicia, her ability to understand him without words, to anticipate where his heart was leading him before he even spoke. For all her obsession with astrology and anthropology, what Felicia understood best was mythology. She could go on for hours over the fates of Hercules, Orestes, and Oedipus. As she explained it, they were practically gods among men and they knew it. And it was that knowledge that brought them down. Hamartia, the Greeks called it, although Dean understood it as plain old hubris – reaching for stars that you had no business touching.

Years ago, when they were still in college and he'd explained he was a wizard, he'd told her that's what magic felt like, holding stars in your hand, the power and exhilaration of reaching out just because you could. And as he'd put those thoughts into words, he'd suddenly realized _that_ was why he and Ginny had broken up and _that_ was why he'd left the magical world. There was something about magic that pushed you to reach higher and higher past your limits until you were reaching for the stars, reaching out for things you had no right to. What was it the bard had said: reaching out for the star that explodes.*

In the end, that's what Voldemort had been about – and Harry too. Both were stars dancing around each other trying to see which one could make the other implode first. And all the lesser stars, ordinary magical folk and Death Eaters alike, had followed in their wake, Ginny chief among them, slavishly attaching their fates to the two primary luminaries, surviving or falling as they did. Even the people who were barely in their orbits came out singed.

How was Felix or anyone supposed to fare in that maelstrom?

His lips twisted in bitterness as he belatedly realized no one ever bothered to tell the Muggleborns – certainly not him, nominal or otherwise – how to do that.

His heart skipped a beat as he recalled the flickering video images that constituted his past, as well as the tragic photos that pre-saged one possible future.

He took the baby from Felicia's lap and held out a hand to help her up.

The house was closed and on the market by the weekend. He, Felicia and the kids had already been gone for 3 days before that.

This time he hadn't left Seamus an address. As an auror, the less Seamus knew, the better, if only to protect his career.

But, just as his father had done, he'd left a message.

Somewhere in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on the desk where the nameplate read Seamus Finnegan, appeared a copy of a rolled parchment, a Muggle VCR tape, and note on Muggle paper reading _Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain._

**~*Fin*~**

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><p><strong>Author's End Note:<strong> _Okay this is VERY rough and unbeta'd so apologies for any errors. The bard I'm referring to above is Kate Bush and that * line is a lyric from her song "Reaching Out."_

**Author's 2****nd**** End Note:** _This was originally written for the hp_diversity fest on live journal which asks writers to take a prompt and write about any of the Harry Potter characters of color. I chose Dean Thomas. I posted it to the community at 5 am skidding in right on the deadline. It was my first fest, I was panicked and had no time to send it to a beta ( the lovely Delphi, who volunteered, bless her heart ). So this is rough. If it doesn't make sense or if something is wildly out of whack, let me know! I'll try to fix. _


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